A New Chapter for BetaBooks

It has been a long time since we last wrote here.

That last post from 2024 was about a database problem that made the app painful to use. I know that experience frustrated many of you. Some of you reached out for support and did not get a reply quickly enough. That is not the level of care you deserve.

I want to start by saying we are sorry for that, and we want to change it.

Who am I?

My name is Pedro. I am a software engineer from Brazil. I started helping BetaBooks in 2024, when I was brought in to do the invisible work of keeping the app running.

Well. That work turned into something bigger.

After the database issues later that year, Pam and I started talking about what BetaBooks needed long-term. Not just emergency fixes, but real care. In early 2025, I joined Pam as a partner.

So now there are two of us. Pam, who many of you already know, and me — someone you have not met yet. We are the team carrying BetaBooks forward from here.

What have we been doing?

For the last year and a half, most of the work has been quiet. The kind of work nobody notices unless it breaks.

We upgraded old libraries and frameworks that were years out of date. We fixed more than thirty bugs this year. We kept the app running through upgrades that, from the outside, looked like nothing was happening.

That matters.

When software gets old without maintenance, small problems become big problems very quickly. The database issues were exactly that. Since then, we have been working to make sure that does not happen again.

Then, last week, we moved BetaBooks off Heroku and onto infrastructure we control more directly. The app now has more room to grow. This was not glamorous work, but it was important.

Where are we now?

For the first time in a while, BetaBooks feels steady again.

The foundation is stronger. The app is on infrastructure we trust. We are finally in a position to do more than just keep the lights on.

That is the important part.

Since I joined, I have been learning a lot about how authors run betas and how readers use the app. I am not a writer like many of you, so I am learning from this community too. Every bug I fix and every support email I read teaches me something new about what you need.

BetaBooks is still small. But authors still choose to pay for it and trust us with their work. We are grateful for that. Now that the app is steadier, we can focus on making the experience better.

What comes next?

Pam and I have ideas.

We want to improve the features you use most. We want to add things that make your beta process smoother. We want to take care of the small details that make the app feel clearer and easier to use.

But what should we improve first? The people who know best what BetaBooks needs are you, the authors and readers who use it every day.

So here is what I want to ask.

If you use BetaBooks and something is getting in your way — a missing feature, a confusing flow, a bug that slows you down — please tell us. We want to understand what you need.

I cannot promise we will build everything. We are still a very small team. But I can promise we will listen, and we will be honest about what we can do and when.

Thank you

Thank you for sticking with BetaBooks through a long quiet period. Thank you for the feedback you have sent, the bugs you have reported, and the patience you have shown.

BetaBooks has been helping authors manage their betas for nearly ten years. That is a long time for software this size. I did not create BetaBooks, but I care a lot about keeping it useful. Pam and I are committed to making it better, one step at a time.

If you have ideas, questions, or just want to say hello, please write to me.

I hope to hear from you.

— Pedro